Chronic pain sufferers like Lynda Davies shocked after red light therapy treatment diminishes pain

Lynda Davies thought she’d tried everything to relieve the excruciating pain in her shoulder caused by bursitis. For three years, her life was marred by chronic pain that cortisone injections, physiotherapy, acupuncture and exercises failed to shift. Then she was introduced to red light therapy and gave it a go. The 58-year-old said she was stunned when the pain subsided substantially after putting a small wrap embedded with LEDs on her shoulder for the first time. “I noticed the reduction straight away, and then I just slept with it every night,” she said. “I was really suffering and I couldn’t believe how much it helped.” After a few sessions, the pain in Ms Davies’ shoulder disappeared for good in what she describes as “a bit of a miracle”. Now she uses the red light wrap anywhere on her body where she feels she needs it, and regularly lends it out to friends to help with various ailments. The warm healing feeling of the sun’s rays on our skin is well-known. History shows that light has long been known for its healing abilities from ancient civilisations to Florence Nightingale who advised sunshine to restore health in the 1850s. The human body is driven by a circadian rhythm, which is our internal 24-hour clock that regulates many bodily functions and is mainly influenced by light and darkness. Red light therapy is the most well-known form of photobiomodulation, which is the medical term for using light (including other colours) to stimulate and enhance the body’s healing abilities. It employs lasers or LEDs to emit specific wavelengths of red and near-infrared light onto the skin to generate photochemical reactions in cells. Red light therapy is having its latest renaissance as an antidote to the rigours of modern life and rising levels of chronic disease, with the added bonus that, if used correctly, it is very safe. Randomised and controlled clinical trials have shown red light therapy can reduce pain, inflammation and damaged tissue and therefore help with a wide variety of health issues. It’s also used to treat skin conditions like psoriasis and eczema, muscle injuries and heal wounds and burns. Clinical trials in red light therapy with people with dry age-related macular degeneration — the leading cause of blindness in people over 50 — have shown improvements in their vision and a reduction in disease. A study by Imperial College in London published in 2021 found that just three minutes of exposure to long wavelength red light once a week significantly improved people’s colour vision, by as much as 20 per cent. Now red light therapy has reached a new frontier as scientists investigate its potential for treating, even preventing, serious diseases including neurodegenerative conditions like Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s and multiple sclerosis. A leading researcher in this field is Ann Liebert, a research fellow at Sydney University, who has been using red light therapy as a physiotherapist for nearly 40 years and doing ground-breaking clinical trials into the effect of photobiomodulation on Parkinson’s disease. Dr Liebert said decades of research showed that red light exposure boosted the function of cells’ mitochondria, which generate energy for the body. “There’s more energy for the cell to action on, and that also helps all of the cellular processes and makes the cells work better,’” she said. “In damaged cells, distressed cells or aged cells, that mechanism is damaged. So by using the photobiomodulation, it sets up a signalling effect on those cells to decrease inflammation and by decreasing inflammation, it allows an effect to improve the mitochondrial action.” Dr Liebert said this then had a downstream effect on cellular processes, enabling things like red blood cells, neurons and nerves to heal and work better. Her latest research has shown that red light therapy can significantly reduce motor and non-motor symptoms of Parkinson’s disease over a five-year period and significantly improve a sufferer’s gut microbiome. Dr Liebert said that photobiomodulation had been shown to improve cellular function and DNA function in the brain and the gut, which are connected by a network of nerves.. “The really exciting thing we also showed is that with decreased inflammation, we improved the microbiome, which is the bacteria, which has also got DNA,” she said. “And by improving the bacteria in the cells, we’ve been able to improve the metabolites that the bacteria make, and in our gut, it makes dopamine and serotonin and they are the things that are missing in Parkinson’s disease.” Dr Liebert said it was important to distinguish between LED and laser in red light therapy because they work differently and have different effects. “It’s more the medical grade lasers, what we call photobiomodulation, that tends to have the long-term effect on the cells,” she said. Dr Liebert said infrared lasers can penetrate about 2cm into the body while LEDs can reach a few millimetres, except on the head where they can penetrate further through the skull into the brain. “If you’ve got a deep Achilles tendon, as a physiotherapist, I would use an infrared laser on the tendon, and it would have very good healing effects. If you have a very superficial burn wound or scrape, I could use an LED red light to heal it,” she said. Dr Liebert said photobiomodulation was now included in international guidelines on how to help with the side effects of chemotherapy and radiation treatment for cancer. Perth exercise physiologist and horse trainer Sue Poole set up her own business manufacturing red light therapy wraps almost 15 years ago. When one of her horses was injured, she bought a pad embedded with red light LEDs from overseas to use on its leg and the horse made what vets told her was a “remarkable recovery”. She later decided to design and make her own portable battery-powered red light pads in Australia and has sold more than 5000 of them to date. “Most people purchase them for musculoskeletal issues. Arthritis is a big one. General back pain, muscle pain, sports rehabilitation, tendon and ligament issues, and pain in general,” Ms Poole said. “One of the other things it does is stimulate the endorphin release, which is a pain management hormone. There’s no downside, as the body will only absorb what it needs in any one session and discard the rest.” Ms Davies used one of Ms Poole’s wrap to resolve her bursitis but not everyone gets such a quick result. “Some people get the miraculous shift in symptoms very quickly. For others, it’s a longer, slower process,” Ms Poole said. Ms Poole said in her experience with horses, where there is no placebo effect, red light therapy speeds up the rate and completeness of recovery from injury by 30 per cent. “It definitely does have an overall healing effect, because it does stimulate collagen production, which is required for tendon ligament muscle healing,” she said. Ms Poole said people were much more aware of red light therapy now compared to a decade ago when she had just started her business. “A lot of people are becoming much more inclined towards alternative therapies because they’re disillusioned with Big Pharma,” she said. “They want to take more control over their own health and wellness.” Former nurse Maya Horth opened the Element Health Optimisation Centre in Claremont a year ago where she offers sessions in a red light therapy bed which can give the body 360-degree exposure. She said she saw the benefits in her clients who are of various ages and come with a variety of health conditions. “Some are just coming for anti-ageing and general wellness but some people who have chronic issues, long-term issues, lots of gut issues and eczema, psoriasis. That’s what we see the most benefits with the red light,” Ms Horth said. “We see a lot of clients who have sudden injuries. Let’s say they sprained their ankle, or they had a surgery, and the progress of healing is just incredible. You can see how the bruising go yellowish in two, three days. It’s just much, much faster repair.” Writing for The Conversation earlier this year, Praveen Arany, a professor of oral biology from the University at Buffalo in New York, said rigorous research studies were still missing for some of the health benefits and effects attributed to red light therapy. He said the commercial use of red light therapy was a “rapidly evolving field” with LED and laser devices readily available in clinical and non-clinical settings, and for at-home use. “The general consensus is that LEDs are OK to use in commercial establishments like beauty salons and medical spas, provided practitioners receive the appropriate training. But the use of laser devices should be relegated to clinical specialists. That’s because lasers, in untrained hands, have the potential to do more damage than LEDs,” he wrote. “As for some home products, their quality and reliability may be questionable; they might not meet minimum quality standards of output power or wavelength.” Professor Arany said there was a critical need for regulatory bodies, like the Federal Drugs Administration in the US and the Therapeutic Goods Administration in Australia, to evaluate devices to make sure they meet specifications.

Chronic pain sufferers like Lynda Davies shocked after red light therapy treatment diminishes pain

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